Stakes over Iran Talks on the Rise

As Secretary of State John Kerry and foreign ministers of at least four other major powers prepared to join talks with Iran in Geneva Saturday, the stakes over the eventual success or failure of the negotiations seem very much on the rise here.

While nervous Democrats in the Senate held off a last-minute push by Republicans to approve legislation preventing President Barack Obama from easing sanctions against Iran as part of a possible interim deal to curb its nuclear programme, they also warned that, absent an accord in Geneva, new punitive measures are likely to be enacted shortly after Congress returns from its Thanksgiving recess Dec. 9.

Most analysts, including administration officials involved in the negotiation, believe that any new sanctions – or curbs on Obama’s authority to waive existing ones – are likely to drive Iran from the table by bolstering hard-liners in Tehran who have long argued that Obama is either unwilling or unable to deliver what they regard as a minimally acceptable deal.

Such a breakdown in the talks would return the two countries to a path of confrontation, significantly enhancing the chances of war, according to both the White House and most independent analysts.

While diplomats from the so-called P5+1 (U.S., Britain, France, Russia, and China plus Germany) and Iran have been remarkably tight-lipped about the past three days of talks, foes of a likely accord – almost all of whom are associated with the Israel lobby here – have escalated their attacks here.

Even if an interim accord is reached within the coming days, the lobby’s leaders and their backers in Congress have made clear they will not give up on their efforts to derail its implementation. Republican lawmakers, in particular, warned this week that, in addition to seeking new sanctions, they will introduce legislation aimed at reducing Obama’s room for manoeuvre.

A number of prominent neo-conservatives, who have tried to lie relatively low on the Iran issue due to their high-profile championship 10 years ago of the now-highly unpopular Iraq war, have come to the fore in recent days, apparently unable to restrain themselves at such a critical moment.

Click Here: cheap INTERNATIONAL jersey

One leading Iraq hawk and co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and the Emergency Committee for Israel, Bill Kristol, who has been immersed in “Obamacare” and intra-Republican politics for weeks, titled the lead editorial in his Weekly Standard magazine “No Deal”.

“[S]erious people, in Congress and outside, will do their utmost to expose and scuttle Obama’s bad Iran deal. They can expect to be smeared by the Obama administration as reckless warmongers and slandered by Obama’s media epigones as tools of the Israel lobby,” he wrote, calling on lawmakers to resist such intimidation.

Similarly, the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer, a leading neo-conservative who has largely neglected Iran in recent months, published a column Friday entitled “A ‘Sucker’s Deal’” – the phrase used by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who reportedly blew up the last round of Geneva talks at the 11^th hour earlier this month – in which he echoed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s argument that any easing of sanctions against Iran as part of an interim accord would be irreversible.

Netanyahu and his supporters here have demanded that Iran be denied any sanctions relief pending verifiable steps leading to the virtually complete dismantlement of its nuclear programme, including any enrichment of uranium which Iran has long claimed is its “right” under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

According to multiple reports, the current offer by the P5+1 governments for an interim accord – which would eventually be superceded by a comprehensive agreement to be finalised within six months to a year – would permit Tehran to continue enrichment to 3.5 percent, although it would not explicitly recognise a “right to enrich”.

Such an agreement would also require Iran to freeze its 20-percent enrichment programme, as well as the number of centrifuges it is operating; place its current stockpile of 20-percent enriched uranium – which is closer to bomb grade – under international supervision pending its transformation into oxide or less-dangerous forms; and an effective suspension of work on its Arak heavy-water facility, which, when operational, would produce plutonium fuel for its nuclear reactors.